Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(14)

He moved his hand away, placing it at his side. I wished he’d slapped me in the face. It would have been somehow kinder.

“Did he?”

“He did. He’s very clever. And everything you said about him is probably right. But I was the one who went in Paulie’s room. I was going to do it. I was going to end him so you could get his heart.” I didn’t mention Jessica’s part. What I’d done was my choice and my responsibility. Now wasn’t the time to diffuse it with Jessica-shaped shadow play. “I knew what it meant. I knew that if my plan worked, you’d have a heart that you thought was stolen. You never would have felt right about yourself. I knew I was condemning you, in a way. And us. I knew you wouldn’t forgive me. I was ending us. And I should say I’m sorry, but I’d do it again if I thought it would save your life.”

“You didn’t do it though.”

“Brad texted me while I was in the room. He had a heart from that poor guy in Ojai. The one who jogs and hates spicy food apparently. So I didn’t have to go through with it.”

He took my hand again and rubbed each finger as if considering their ability to do harm. “God saved you.”

“You believe in God? You believe he’d step in and save me? And he’d kill someone to do it?”

“God was in Brad’s text. I believe that. But swear to me, I mean, I don’t think that circumstance will recur, but swear to me you won’t ever consider something like that again.”

“I won’t let you die if I can prevent it. I don’t feel right about it, and I won’t pretend I do, but it’s like how a soldier must feel when he kills the enemy. I’m sure it doesn’t feel good, but there wasn’t a choice. And if it comes to me not having a choice again, I’ll do it again.”

I searched his face for distaste or foul rancor, and I found none. Then I looked for disquiet or emotional blankness, and I found none of that either. I couldn’t read him, even when he took my arms and pulled me forward onto him. I rested my head on his chest.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I’m scared of death. But you? You put death to shame.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to leave me?”

“No.”

“Do you forgive me?”

He took a long time to answer. I told myself it didn’t matter, that his forgiveness was beside the point when I had his love.

“I fear you. I am in awe of you. I can’t forgive you for something you didn’t do.”

I’d thought I was committed to him before. I’d thought I’d given him my whole heart and that I owned him completely. But I hadn’t. Maybe I’d spend the rest of his life realizing I’d never owned him, loved him, or committed to him fully. Maybe it was a matter of the changing acoustics of an ever-expanding heart.

I kissed his scar, and he stroked my hair. I worked down his body and took his cock in my mouth. I wanted to eat him alive, swallow his forgiveness, absorb his compassion. I wanted to become him, to own his pain and kindness, his sadism and his maturity, holding it to myself in a drum-tight skin of gratitude.

chapter 9.

MONICA

I usually had a dream. I was in Sequoia, but it wasn’t Sequoia. The hallways were narrower, the lights dimmer or blindingly bright—endlessly white and long. Doors everywhere, some locked and some ajar. In my right hand beat a throbbing, pulsing heart, dropping blood on the bleached linoleum. I only had as much time as the blood in the heart, and I needed to get to Jonathan’s room with it or he would die. Sometimes the hospital was empty, and I couldn’t find the room. Sometimes it was populated with people who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about or where I should go. Once, I dreamed the halls were lined with chicken coops, and Dr. Brad sent me in the wrong direction on purpose.

Jonathan always died. I always woke up in a state of grief and misery, and he was either next to me or I was in an empty bed, looking for a way to call him without worrying him.

The night after he reclaimed me in the studio, with every inch of my body stinging and alive, I expected to have that same dream, as surprising and terrifying as it always was. But it didn’t come. And not the night after, when he made me wait twelve minutes before touching me. Nor over the next week as he broke me, pushed me, hurt me until I was a puddle of emotional satisfaction. I never had that dream again, as if my subconscious was suddenly okay with the whole arrangement of my life and my conscious brain was the only troublemaker.

He hurt me, but he didn’t bind me. When I asked him to, he spanked me for questioning him, but he still didn’t tie me up.

I mistrusted this in quiet moments, but I let it go. He was too good, the same man he had been. Still wise and kind, still generous and funny, but with an added helping of scorching cruelty in bed. He’d scared the dreams away, and I was safe at night, but in the day, I still carried my anxieties. Even when I forgot to worry, I reminded myself that I hated grey and pale pink, that copper and blood had the same smell, and that the heart machine in the hospital made the same beep as the timer in the coffee shop. My brain did its due diligence, creating panic as insurance against death.

Jonathan had been more productive. Six weeks after he returned from the hospital, he started forgetting his anti-rejection meds because of the complexities of dosing, and his immune system started slipping because he wasn’t getting enough nutrients. Shortly after Valentine’s Day, he found out I’d been staying home to watch him. He’d sliced the air with his hand and said simply, “No.”